Letter 333 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.  Strawberry Hill, Dec. 19, 1767. (page 506)

You are now, I reckon, settled in your new habitation:(1000) I would not interrupt you in your journeyings, dear Sir, but am not at all pleased that you are seated so little to your mind; and yet I think you will stay there.  Cambridge and Ely are neighbourhoods to your taste, and if you do not again shift your quarters, I shall make them and you a visit:  Ely I have never seen.  I Could have wished that you had preferred this part of the world; and yet, I trust, I shall see you here oftener than I have done of late.  This, to my great satisfaction, is my last session of Parliament; to which, and to politics, I shall ever bid adieu!

I did not go to Paris for my health, though I found the journey and the seasickness, which I had never experienced before, contributed to it greatly.  I have not been so well for some years as I am at present, and if I continue to plump up as I do at present, I do not know but by the time we may meet, whether you may not discover, without a microscope, that I am really fatter.  I went to make a visit to my dear old blind woman, and to see some things I could not see in winter.

For the Catholic religion, I think it very consumptive.  With a little patience, if Whitfield, Wesley, my Lady Huntingdon, and that rogue Madan(1001) live, I do not doubt but we shall have something very like it here.  And yet I had rather live at the end of a tawdry religion, than at the beginning; which is always more stern and hypocritic.

I shall be very glad to see your laborious work of the maps; you are indefatigable, I know:  I think mapping would try my patience more than any thing.

My Richard the Third will go to press this week, and you shall have one of the first copies, which I think will be in about a month, if you will tell me how to convey it:  direct to Arlington street.  Mr. Gray went to Cambridge yesterday se’nnight:  I wait for some papers from him for my purpose.  I grieve for your sufferings by the inundation; but you are not only an hermit, but, what is better, a real philosopher.  Let me hear from you soon.  Yours ever.

(1000) Mr. Cole had lately removed from Bleckeley, Bucks, to Waterbeach, near Cambridge.

(1001) The Rev. Martin Madan, author of “Thelypthora,” a defence of a plurality of wives.  In 1767, he subjected himself to much obloquy, by dissuading a clerical friend from giving up a benefice, which he had accepted under a solemn promise of eventual resignation.-E.

Letter 334 To Sir David Dalrymple.(1002) Strawberry Hill, Jan. 17, 1768. (page 507)